Posted: August 01, 2000 at 15:52:26: by Goodgulf
: : : I was just reading through the Balrog wing discussion, but I am not here for wing-clipping today. The point was made about Tolkein being a perfectionist writer - nonsense!!
: : : Example 1 - Strider tells Sam that Weathertop is halfway between Bree and Rivendell, it is more like a third of the way, and Strider is supposed to know the country like the back of his hand (wait a minute, where did that freckle come from?????!)
: : : Example 2 - The 'Great Elven King Bladorthin' - can someone tell me where this Elf was king of, or is he just a mistake? (I know the MERP take on it, but have never seen a Tolkeinian answer, granted I haven't read ALL of the HoME series, but most thereof): : : 2 Examples of 'errors'. Now I don't personally believe that any error delibertate or otherwise could take anything away from the books or mythology created, the fact remains however that even the greatest literary minds cannot be 100% perfect or notice everything.
: : : Anyone else got any clangers that the prof dropped in his time??
: : : Don Q : : I'll leave the clanger hunting to someone else. However, I believe Tolkien was just as much of a prefectionist as any of us. We want people to understand what we are saying and what we mean. Unfortunately, we often make and overlook little mistakes that completely skew the meaning of our posts. Our posts are usually short. Imagine what Tolkien had to deal with while writing LOTR. Not only was he writing a new story, but was incorporating elements from other stories.
: : ~Aelmer : OK, all the answers given me are banging on about typos and 'give the guy a rest' and it being someone elses fault. If you read my post I said quite implicitly that errors do NOT take anything away from the books or his genius, and I only used what I had been reading as an intro to a question that I had wondered about..... : The examples that I gave are of author errors or oversights and I think are interesting to identify and discuss - so does anyone want to contribute to a discussion on inconsistencies and errors in the books?
: I would also be very interested in any thoughts/knowledge on the Bladorthin question
: Don Q You mischaracterised my post. My first paragraph agrees that there are errors and loose ends which ARE Tolkien's fault. I said we could all find plenty of them. So what? Do I wish to discuss them? Perhaps. But your initial post kind of came off as "trolling" to get a reaction. If I misunderstood your intent, my apology.
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